


afraid to walk the streets alone (or by your side)

by citadelofswords



Category: Friends at the Table (Podcast)
Genre: Angst for days, COUNTER/Weight Spoilers, Canon Compliant, Fake Marriage, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Other, Pining, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, seriously don't read this if you haven't finished c/w
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-25
Updated: 2017-09-25
Packaged: 2019-01-05 03:24:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12181962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/citadelofswords/pseuds/citadelofswords
Summary: No. It's good enough for him. Ithasto be good enough for him.(snippets of around five times cass and mako pretended to be married, and one time it wasn't a game anymore)





	afraid to walk the streets alone (or by your side)

**Author's Note:**

> i feel like it's, uh, like my Shtick with a new fandom to drop the saddest, angstiest thing i possibly can before i get around to writing the fluffy shit. also to write weird soulmate aus? (i like this particular soulmate-identifying mark bc it allows for more than one soulmate bc like fuck the idea of having only one soulmate that's stupid)
> 
> i was gonna tag cass&aria and mako/tower but i didn't feel like they were in the fic long enough to warrant getting ship tags? but they're here.
> 
> LAST CHANCE BEEP BEEP TURN BACK NOW IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED COUNTER/WEIGHT, WHICH I BY THE WAY DON'T OWN IN CASE THE FRIENDS HIT AO3, I LOVE Y'ALL A LOT
> 
> title borrowed from shot heard round the world by boys like girls

0.

Cass has long gloves that come up to their elbows for formal events and shorter gloves that end just below their wrists for lounging around the ship. They only pulled out the long gloves because the first time they met Aria she dragged them away from a fight by the wrist and they ended up with a bright pink band where her hand had touched them. Mako isn't sure of specific details on Apostolosian soulmarks, but he knows Cass is pretty touchy about the fact that they have not just one, but  _ two _ marks, and neither one is from an Apostolosian. Apparently it's weird or something.

Neither Mako nor Aria has a mark from Cass. Mako would be more offended about that if Cass touched anyone, which they don't. Again, probably an Apostolosian thing. Mako kind of remembers that from the few Apostolosians he knew on September but even they, eventually, pulled their gloves off and let themselves be marked up. 

Mako doesn't think much of it. He has Aria’s splotch of pink on his hip as well as Tower Chalet’s forest green on his hand and that's good enough for him. 

Or. 

No, it's good enough for him. It  _ has _ to be good enough for him.

 

* * *

 

i.

"Honey," Mako says, teeth gritted, "take your gloves off."

"My hands are cold," Cass replies, pinching Mako's side through the fabric of his jacket.

It doesn’t even really matter, Mako figures. He just likes being difficult.

"If you’re wearing gloves all the time then what do I say to people when they ask to see my mark?" Mako asks.

Cass shrugs. "Tell them it's in an inappropriate place," they say, and drift off in search of drinks.

That's conjuring up so many images of Cass's hands that Mako finishes his drink in one go. They've got a job to do here and he cannot afford to be distracted by thoughts of Cass's hands, Cass's bare hands, on his neck, on his sides, maybe even on his thighs, with no clothes between them, painting Mako's body in swaths of color even though he knows that’s not quite how soulmarks work. Whoops, he's thinking about it. Time for another drink and to remember the time Lazer Ted showed him impressively realized art of Twelfth naked.

This is such a stupid gambit. The married card? Why did he even pull this one out? Was he even the one who pulled it out? Mako squints at his empty glass. It must have been him. Cass would never suggest a plan so doomed to fail. Cass has the best plans. They've only been working together for a couple of months but Mako knows Cass has the best plans. They just have that kind of 'I make good plans' face, you know?

A gloved hand plucks the empty glass from his grip and deposits a new one, filled with sickly sweet plum colored alcohol, into his hand. “Relax," Cass says, mouth mere inches away from Mako’s ear, making him shiver. “You look like you’re gonna throw up.”

“I feel like I’m gonna throw up,” Mako says crossly. “What are in these drinks?”

“I don’t know, I’m not feeling anything,” Cass says, moving a little further away and linking their arm with Mako’s. “Doesn’t matter. You can still fog drunk, right?”

“Obviously,” Mako snorts, and makes one of the lights wink at Cass.

“Just checking,” Cass says. “We just need to get you as close to the network as possible so you can get Aria and AuDy in, and then we go home.”

“Can we dance?” Mako asks. “Just one?”

“Sure,” Cass says, looking a little distracted. “Wait, no, this isn’t a party with dancing, Mako.”

“And?”

Cass sighs, the long-suffering sigh of one who’s been beaten, and rubs the bridge of their nose with their other hand. “One dance,” they say. “But later. Once we’ve done what we have to. Let’s mingle.”

Cass, as former and or current royalty, is much better at mingling than Mako is, but Mako discovers a particular skill at being the fawning trophy husband. They’re playing as people who aren’t them, of course, but Mako’s got an intricate backstory and set of hobbies in case anyone asks, and Cass apparently has all the questions about “when they met” and “who proposed” and “when they knew they were soulmates” down par. For someone who didn’t suggest the plan, they sure have it under control.

In fact, it goes so well that Mako doesn’t even realize everything’s gone to shit until late in the party, when everyone is a reasonable enough level of tipsy that Mako is sure they’re going unnoticed. He’s at the edge of the room, just starting to get a handle on the network when Cass appears from nowhere and says, "Mako, we gotta go."

"But I'm just starting to have fun!" Mako whines, nudging a little harder at the network.

"Yeah, and they're onto us," Cass says, and wraps their arm around Mako's waist. "I promise we'll dance back home, but right now we need to move."

"Fine," Mako groans. "Will you take your gloves off?"

"You're so drunk," Cass says, rolling their eyes, but it's not a no. Mako brightens, and lets Cass lead him off the floor.

They’re across town before they both realize that they never actually managed to fog the network and pull the info they needed. There’s a long moment where they stare at each other silently, and then Cass sighs and says, “I guess we have to go back for Aria and AuDy, huh.”

(Of course, when they get back, everything goes to shit; two people die, they don’t get the information, and Mako has to take a crash course in Apostolosian CPR when Cass gets shot dangerously close to some vital organs. Cass ends up with a smudge of sky blue on their chest and gives Mako a dirty look the first time they see it, but they also teach him a supposedly Atlantean folk dance in the empty cargo bay so they must not be too mad.)

 

* * *

 

ii.

"So you're his soulmate?" the man says, raising an eyebrow.

"I'm their husband," Mako says, affronted. "Whether or not they're my soulmate is none of your business."

The man eyes Mako critically. "Really?" he says to Cass. "You married  _ him _ ?"

And, okay, that’s offensive. Mako is a catch, thank you very much. And who does this  _ douchebag _ think he is, coming over to Cass at a bar (while they’re very clearly trying to enjoy their first night off in a long while) and hitting on them, saying all sorts of inappropriate things about soulmates when it was very clearly making Cass uncomfortable? No one Mako wants anyone near his ...fri _ end  _ for longer than negative thirty seconds.

Mako opens his mouth to bite out an angry retort, but Cass takes his hand and squeezes it. Mako looks up at them and finds their eyes narrowed, glaring at the douchebag dude. 

"I don't like your tone," they say. And then they do something Mako doesn't expect— they unbutton their jacket, and then their shirt, revealing the edge of the soulmark Mako left on them so many months ago where it rests over their heart. "I would appreciate if you would leave us alone now."

The man looks startled for all of a moment, and then his face twists. As his mouth opens to sneer something, Cass rises, reclasping their jacket as they do so, to tower over the both of them.

"I won't ask again," Cass says, and the man wilts. He slinks away, hands shoved deep in his pockets. Satisfied, Cass sits back down.

Mako grins. "Yeah, you better run," he crows, and leans back against Cass's side, almost in their lap. "You didn't need my help at all, I see."

"I kind of did," Cass says, slipping an arm around Mako's waist and pulling him closer. "Now I can enjoy my drinking in peace." 

“Why didn’t you just show them the wrist mark?” Mako asks, tugging on a loose thread of Cass’s glove where the barest hint of pink-stained skin shows.

“Because it’s not your mark,” Cass replies, as though it’s a dumb question. Maybe it is a dumb question. But they used Aria’s mark the last time they pretended to be married for a job, and it would be easy to pass it off as Mako’s color given the shade of his hair (electric pink) and then Cass wouldn’t have to go through all the trouble of unbuttoning their shirt to reveal their beautiful chest and—

Twelfth. Photorealistically rendered naked. Right. 

“It would have been easier,” Mako says, because he can’t let shit go.

“I showed those assholes Aria’s last time because you hadn’t left a mark on me yet,” Cass says, and there goes Mako trying to get the image of Cass’s bare chest out of his head.

“I’m gonna leave you to this," Mako says, gesturing to the drinks. “You probably don’t want me around on your day off anyway, right?” 

He tries to uncurl himself from Cass’s grip, but their arm tightens the tiniest bit, and when Mako looks at them, they’re shaking their head. 

“Stay," they say. “I'd like it if you would. Truly." 

“Okay. Sure," Mako says, and Cass orders him a drink. 

They don't move their arm from around Mako’s waist for the rest of the night.

 

* * *

 

iii.

“Hey,” Cass’s voice says, startling Mako out of his doze. “Can I talk to you about something?”

Mako twists around until he’s looking up at Cass, blinking the sleep from his eyes. “Business or pleasure?”

“What?” 

“Never mind. What’s up?”

Cass hesitates, and then fumbles around in their pocket for something. “I went out to get this,” they say. “Because we keep doing this… this pretending to be married thing—,”

“We’ve done it maybe twice?” Though the fact that they’ve done it twice is astounding, given the fact that both times were absolute disasters. Wait. “Wait, I guess we’ve done it three times, if we’re counting that time at the hotel. Oh, wait, are we counting that douchebag at that bar? Which would make it four?”

Cass acts like they didn’t hear him, but there’s a flush creeping up their neck. “Sorry, might need you to sit up,” they mutter. Mako blushes, remembering that he’d been napping with his head in Cass’s lap like they were actually married instead of constantly pretending to be so, and slowly pushes himself upright to sit facing Cass.

Cass, who is pulling a ring out of their pocket.

“What,” Mako says, trying to keep his voice at a normal pitch.

Cass doesn’t meet Mako’s eyes. “We’ve got another job coming up and I thought it might sell the authenticity if we, we needed to pull it again.”

Mako’s throat closes. “Oh. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely,” he says, and tries to reach for it. Cass holds up their other hand.

“I’m not finished,” they say. “I went out to get this, and that’s when I found out that every jewelry store in the vicinity within our price range only sells soulmate bands. I couldn’t get any other kind of ring that looks enough like a wedding band that we could feasibly pass it off as one.”

Mako has heard of soulmate bands. They’re just like wedding bands, except they leave an imprint of your true romantic soulmate’s color on your finger after the first time you take it off, regardless of whether or not you’ve met that person. The ones he’s seen, however, look a lot flashier than this plain silver band. It’s hard to imagine something like this being responsible for so many broken marriages.

“Really?” Mako asks. “Only soulmate bands?”

“Nothing else,” Cass says. “I asked to price a ring that wasn’t a soulmate band and the jeweler laughed at me. Had to go to a different store for this one.”

Mako extends his hand again, palm out, and Cass carefully gives him the ring. It’s warm to the touch, which is to be expected since Cass has been carrying it in their pocket for— “When did you get this?”

Cass doesn’t answer. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to put it on to sell the authenticity,” they say. “I know it’s a lot to ask of someone who I...” They bite their lip, and don’t finish the sentence.

For a long, wild moment, Mako considers sliding the ring on, right here, right now, just to see. Just to see how Cass would react, if their eyes would widen, if their lips would part. To see what the look on their face would be like if the silver came away leaving a band of teal, probably, that's probably Cass's color, against Mako’s skin. To see what Cass would do if it was dark enough, deep enough, to be obvious to everyone, to mark Mako as Cass’s and  _ only _ Cass’s for the rest of their lives.

And then, abruptly, Mako is stabbed with an icy fear, that the ring will come away a different color. Like Tower’s forest green. Or a color that Mako doesn’t recognize. Or maybe, just maybe, it’ll come away with no color at all. And that will be that. He’ll know who it is and it won’t be Cass, or it won’t be anyone at all. At least without the ring he can cling to the shred of hope. Mako takes Cass’s hand in his and presses the ring back to them.

“Here,” he says. “We can figure something else out.”

Cass’s eyebrows knit together.

“Save it for when you actually get married someday,” Mako says, trying to ignore how his heart breaks at the words. “We can sell our undying affection without a ring. Proven it already, haven’t we?”

Cass chuckles at that. “I guess you’re right,” they say. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” Mako says, and stretches.

“Sorry to wake you— you can go back to sleep, if you want.”

Mako wants nothing more than to curl up in Cass’s lap again, where Cass will absently run a hand through his hair and hum under their breath, lulling Mako off to sleep, but he needs a real bed and it hurts to think about trying to reclaim that easy domesticity after the conversation they just had. “I’m gonna go to my room, actually.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“G’night, Cass,” Mako says, rising, resisting the urge to kiss Cass’s cheek as he goes.

“Good night,” Cass says in return.

God, but this is going to have to stop soon, if Mako’s going to have any sanity left by the time he’s fifty.

 

* * *

 

iv.

After the Snowtrak fiasco, it's almost a week and a half before the Chime figure out where Mako is.

He's woken from a fitful doze by the sounds of a muffled argument outside his hospital room. Mako strains to hear the actual words being said, but can’t pick up anything. Damn the Mesh and its noise-cancellation settings.

The handle on the door starts to jiggle. Mako has a stab of fear that it’s Jorn or someone worse, about the robots that he definitely can’t afford, and looks around to see if there’s anything nearby he can use as a weapon. Maybe the vase of flowers, or the remote for the television. He's just reaching for it when the door slams open and he can hear the voices: "— you are not going to tell me I can't see my  _ husband _ , thank you."

_ Cass _ . Instantly Mako relaxes, hand dropping against the bed, as they stride into the room, followed by a disgruntled doctor, who says, "Mr. Trig, can you confirm the veracity of this person’s statement?"

Mako swallows. "What, that they're my partner?" He scoffs. "You've seen so much of my body in the last ten days. Did you somehow miss my mark?"

The doctor grumbles again, but leaves the room, closing it behind them. Cass immediately strides to the bed and folds themself into a chair at Mako's side. "Mako," they say, eyes wide. "What the fuck did you do?"

"Got myself shot in the chest, no big deal." Mako grins, and moves the flimsy hospital gown aside to show off his new weird chest. "You were there."

Cass grits their teeth. "I know," they say, and drop their head into their hands.

"Hey," Mako says, surprised. "It's not— It's okay, you know? Sorry." Tentatively he rests his hand on the top of Cass's head, scratching his nails over Cass's scalp. "I'm okay. I'm great."

"You're lucky," Cass says, to their hands. Mako is startled to feel them shaking. "Lucky you had someone capable enough to heal you up."

"Whoa, whoa, hold on," Mako says. "What happened to Aria? She's okay, right?"

"Yeah, barely," Cass growls. "I couldn't— I wasn't good enough to help her. Had to get Koda in. She almost died because of me."

"But she didn't."

Cass exhales, and looks up. They have dark circles under their eyes and their gaze is unfocused. "She didn't."

"Great!" Mako chirps. "She's alive and I'm alive and you're good and AuDy's fine, too, right?"

"Yeah."

Mako boops Cass's nose and then stretches. "So then we're golden." A thought occurs to him. "Wait, did you tell that doctor we were married to get in here?"

"I— maybe?" They blush, faintly, glowing the slightest bit. Mako cackles, and the glow brightens. "Hey, it’s not always a complete disaster of a plan."

"Oh, yeah, it worked in that bar. I guess we can add another success to that list. ‘Checking in on your injured teammate who you didn't know was alive or dead’?"

Cass rolls their eyes. "They're going to figure out I lied eventually."

"And when they do you'll dive-roll out the window and I'll tell them the paperwork was filed incorrectly." Mako can feel his smile fade and clears his throat. "Since you won't let me fog the paperwork in."

"We're not—,"

"No, no, I don't want to have the discussion either," Mako says. "It's fine. We can't keep up like this anyway."

Cass sighs. "Mm."

There's a long pause, where they don't say anything, not meeting each other's eyes, and then there's a sound like rustling fabric. Mako looks up to see Cass tugging one of their gloves off with their teeth. "What are you doing?" he asks.

"Leaving," Cass says, and stands up. “So I don’t piss off that doctor anymore.” 

When they place their ungloved hand on Mako's shoulder, Mako shivers, staring up at them with wide eyes. Their hand is warmer than he was expecting, but still cool to the touch.

Cass removes their hand, slides their glove back on, and leans down to press their lips to Mako's forehead, hands cupping his face. "I'll be back tomorrow," they say. "To bring you home."

"Okay," Mako says, and watches them leave. When he looks down, he's startled but not entirely surprised to see the smudge of teal, dark against his pale blue skin, where Cass's hand rested.

 

Cass stops wearing gloves around the Kingdom Come, after that. Aria sits down next to Mako one night with deep teal staining the insides of her fingers and a brilliant smile on her face, and Cass stops wearing gloves around the Kingdom Come.

Mako’s asked AuDy if they feel left out, being a robot who doesn’t have soulmate marks. AuDy had merely shrugged. “I might be sentient,” they’d said, “but that doesn’t mean I share all of your sentiments about belonging. I’m just fine like this, thanks.”

(But AuDy can  _ leave _ soulmate marks, Mako discovers. AuDy pats Mako’s knee with their cold metal fingers and when they walk away Mako is startled to see four lines of a pale grayish green where their fingers were. In retrospect, that should have been Mako’s first sign that something really, really weird was going on with AuDy.)

 

* * *

 

v.

The flight off September is spent half in a drug-addled daze and half with the Mako clones. Mako has no idea who it was who actually stitched him up, since as far as he knows Cass spent the entire journey in the Apokine, and it hurts a little less than he expected it would to think about that.

Mako will always have the colors that they left on him to remember them by while they’re gone, but the Chime can’t last forever, not with the knowledge that he’s a clone and Cass’s sibling’s coup and… and AuDy…

Whatever. He’ll get over it. They’ll be back together soon enough.

Mako doesn’t see Cass until they’ve landed on Counterweight again. Ted’s agreed to take the kids out for a while so he can have some room to breathe, and Aria’s off with Jacqui somewhere and Orth is in the cockpit of the ship, so it’s just Mako in the kitchen scarfing down brownies when Cass appears in the entryway.

“Hey,” they say, and they sound relieved. Mako grins and swallows his brownie.

“Hey!” he says. “Nice to see you made it off-world alive.”

Cass barely smiles. “Nice to see you’re not dead,” they say, gruff, and fiddle with something on their finger. A ring. Mako’s grin slips.

“Yeah, I dunno who fixed me up, but I’m alright,” Mako says. 

Cass is quiet for a moment. “I felt your pain,” they say, finally. “When I was in the Apokine. I felt a lot of people’s pain, heard a lot of people’s voices, but I felt yours like someone was driving a knife in my heart. It— I was really worried.”

Mako says, “I mean, yeah, I crawled into Rigor, and that hurt like a motherfucker, but hey! Not dead.” 

Cass hugs Mako then, almost picking him up off the ground as they do so, in a gesture that surprises Mako so much he almost forgets to reciprocate. “I’m glad,” they say.

“Oh,” Mako says, and hugs them back.

"I'm sorry about Tower," Cass says, into Mako's hair.

"Oh," Mako says, "yeah. I don't blame you for it. You were always closer with Maxine anyway, I—,"

"But I wasn’t," Cass says. "All those memories were fake. So were all my memories of Tower, but yours weren’t. I know how much he meant to you."

Mako swallows. There's so many things he wants to say in this moment.  _ He doesn't mean as much to me as you do. If I'd had to choose between you and any other person on September, I'd trade every single one of them for you. _

(Once upon a time Mako had snuck onto the roof of his dorm with Tower to wait for the sunrise and drink slurpees together. In the dark Tower’s hand had brushed against Mako’s and they’d found each other marked up with color, and had sat there holding hands until dawn. Mako had always regretted leaving him behind with only a shy kiss on the cheek to remember him by, but he had promised himself that he’d go back for Tower eventually.

Is that another one of the fake memories the September Institute has given him? Mako doesn’t know. All he knows is that Tower is trapped with a Divine on the other side of a portal and it was Mako’s rash choice to save Ted that left him there, but none of that seems to really matter when Cass has their arms around Mako like he’s their entire world.

He loved Tower, but he loves Cass. 

The end is coming. Mako can feel it as surely as he can feel the fabric of Cass's jacket under his fingers.)

Cass pulls away from Mako but doesn't step back. Their arms fall from around Mako’s back but one of their hands reaches for Mako’s, and Mako laces their fingers together. The space between them is electrifying. Mako wants so badly to close it again, but his legs won't work.

There’s a long moment where they just look at each other in silence. 

Cass smiles. "Remember that time that Ted tried to sneak us into that party but in order to do it we had to pretend to be married, and then you were so drunk that you told Ted to actually marry us?"

Mako laughs. "That never happened." he says.

"But do you remember it?"

"Oh, yeah," Mako says. "Ted called officiating weddings his twenty-seventh job and the look on your face was hilarious."

"We almost went through with it. I had my hand on your mark and everything."

“To be young and stupid,” Mako says, grinning, but Cass doesn’t smile back. They let go of Mako’s hand to twist the ring on their finger again.

“Is that yours?” Mako asks. 

“Huh? Yeah. Sokrates gave it to me. Or Ted did, the night we got married." 

“You married Ted?”

“No, I married you.”

“WHAT.”

Cass does laugh at that.

“WHY DO I NOT REMEMBER THIS?” Mako yells. “I feel like I should. Was that the same night? No, it couldn’t have been the same night. TED WOULD HAVE ASKED US HOW MARRIED LIFE WAS IF HE’D MARRIED US. Right? RIGHT?”

“Ted wouldn’t have known,” Cass points out. “The false memories were planted once we entered the September Institute.”

“But he also would have asked me. On the ship. On the way back here.” Mako pauses. “Wait, I forgot about the fact that we’re MARRIED.” Mako tries to think back to the hazy, half-formed memory of the Chime being at the September Institute and can only come up with a hazy, half-formed memory of waking up in bed, extremely hungover, with Cass, which definitely never happened and only makes Mako blush. Not even naked Twelfth will cool him off now. 

And then something else occurs to him. “Oh my GOD WERE YOU MY FIRST KISS?”

“No— wait, what? First kiss?”

“Please just forget I said that,” Mako says. “Oh my God. It was probably fake anyway.” He’s starting to get a headache. Man, fuck September.

“We aren’t married.” Cass says, holding up both hands. “We… got it annulled in the morning. I think. Morning’s pretty hazy too. That… may have been when you gave me my mark.” They grimace. “You gave me mine after I gave you yours, that’s super not great.”

“Well, it’s also a false memory,” Mako says. “So it’s still okay for you, I guess. Fuck, I hate September. Really glad we can never go back there again, am I right?”

Cass’s smile grows tight, but they don’t say anything.

“Is it a soulmate band?” Mako asks, curious. Cass twists the ring off their finger, revealing smooth, tan, unstained skin underneath. “Oh.”

Cass looks away.

It’s almost the end. Mako should just, just say something already. About how he doesn’t want this to be a game anymore, about how he’s really never wanted it to be a game, about how fucking confusing it is to be playing two different games and not be sure how to win either one, about how the game metaphor is dumb and he just wants Cass to kiss his dumb fucking face already, about how they’re fucking  _ soulmates _ and they’ve pretended to be married so often that the September Institute literally wrote it into their false memories of each other.

Aside from just kissing Cass, Mako has no idea how to go about saying any of that.

Probably he could just… ramble. Classic Mako Trig motormouth, getting himself into trouble every time he lets it go. Wouldn’t be the worst thing in the entire world.

They both start speaking at the same time.

“Cass—,”

“Look, Mako, I—,”

They stop and chuckle, Mako blushing, Cass starting to glow a little bit.

"You go first," Mako says.

Cass almost smiles, clears their throat, and says, "Mako, I really—,"

It's at that exact moment that Orth bursts into the room, out of breath, eyes wide. "Cassander," he says, and Cass groans. "It's your sibling."

"Tell them I'm busy."

"They've seen the Apokine."

"Fuck," Cass swears, and rolls their eyes. "Tell them I'll be right there."

Orth nods and leaves. Cass looks at Mako, apology written in every line of their face.

"Go," Mako says, waving his hand. "It's no big deal."

Cass nods, and grins at him. "We'll talk later," they promise, and leave the room.

 

(Mako should have guessed that they never would, but he was too busy trying to preserve the memory of Cass laughing to think about it.)

 

* * *

 

 

vi.

There's a humming in the back of his head.

"There's something here for the spouse of Cassander Timaeus Berenice," says the lawyer, whose name Mako has already forgotten.

His shoulder throbs.

Aria looks over at him. "He's sitting right there," she says quietly, and her eyes fill with tears again.

Mako hates watching her cry.

"I'm sorry for your loss," the lawyer says. Empty words.

"What is it?" he asks, voice sounding wrong to his own ears.

The lawyer reaches into their pocket and fumbles around for a moment. They pull something out, hold it out to Mako, and they say, "This is all."

Mako extends a hand. The thing that the lawyer drops into it is smooth, and round, and warm to the touch.

"There's also the matter of the safety deposit box in your names," they say, but Mako barely hears them, too focused on the feeling of the soulmate band Cass bought, so many years ago. For him. For _him_ , Cass bought it for _him_ , why did he _refuse_ —

The humming gets louder.

The lawyer leaves. Aria rubs her hands together, a nervous habit she's picked up when she needs to feel grounded.

"Why did you say it was me?" Mako asks Aria, without looking at her. He's already itching to get up, to flee, to run far away from Counterweight and start working again, but he needs to know this.

"Because of course it was," Aria says, voice thick. "Who else could it have been?"

Mako looks at her, just for a moment. There are tears running down her face. He can't stand it.

He slides the ring onto his finger and stands up.

"I'll see you soon," he says.

Empty words. She knows it. He knows it. She hugs him tightly and sobs when he untangles himself from her grip. He kisses her forehead— one last gift for her— and he leaves.

(He doesn't take the soulmate band off until he loses it on a job, and when he looks down and sees the thick band of deep, rich teal encircling his left ring finger, his throat only closes for a moment.

He can't afford to grieve, not now.

He's got work to do.)

**Author's Note:**

> uh
> 
> hi i'm kales you can find me on tumblr at citadelofswords and on twitter @starrilynight (it's not a fatt twitter but i do post about it a lot?)
> 
> bless [rachel](http://bartholomewrose.tumblr.com) who beta'd this fic (but hasn't read the final scene yet, welp, sorry rachel) also bless whoever came up with apostolosians glowing when they blush cause i uh love it (tell me who u are so i can cite u)
> 
> come yell at me or make me write more of these dweebs so i can feel more comfortable with cass's voice, also pls let me know if i missed an incorrect pronoun, i triplechecked and so did rachel but who FUCKING knows yaknow


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